Secrets of My Success

Hi Team,

I’ve written another guest post over at Blog@Work. Cheers to Anastasia for thinking of me!

This time, I’m revealing all my special secrets — the amazing formula for success that I followed that got me where I am today.  Amazing secret formula! Or is it??

Here’s an exerpt:

Do you have to script a 10-year and a 5-year plan, follow them to the T, and ensure every action of every day furthers you to those goals? Hells no. But some healthy post-mortem self reflection will show you the hidden patterns underlying what at the time seemed like you were just doing what seemed interesting, or were lucky – position X opened up and you got to have experience Y. Look for them. Can you repeat the patterns again? Can you use those patterns to help you take it to the next level?

Patterns and formulas can help you be deliberate when you feel the need for a structured push. But don’t forget to just go do what seems interesting.

Go check it out!

Strokin’ Teh Ego

Joan strokes my ego all the time so of course I love her, but nonetheless it’s nice to get positive feedback from a director.

Today she left me a voice mail, You’re an activator, MFK, an ACTIVATOR. I want you around me all the time!

All because I told her, let’s just declare you the owner of this data instead of asking around for permission and hoping someone drives a top-down decision. I’ll broker an agreement between you and the other department, and we’ll get the SVP to bless it and then we can just get STARTED.

Sigh. Sometimes it’s soooooo annoying working in a consensus-based culture.  And sometimes you just have to be an ACTIVATOR.

Your Daily Poetry: My Groovy Learning (Free Verse, I’m Not Rhymin’ Yo)

In regards to  entirely unrelated set of
Mildly hysterical partners,
I was reminded once again
Sometimes best response is

Stay away

Do absolutely nothing

The hysterical people will sort themselves out.

Does not always work
More art than science
Always seems to resolve in my favor
I am hysterically unscathed

Sometimes helps to ask a small question
Like seeding a cloud
So that it rains
Just bring umbrella

Or get coffee

Return when dry.

Slightly Shocking Advice

G is a colleague who is one of the most amazing leaders of people I know.  He has been doing it for 14 years. I often look to his example & mentoring for advice. Yesterday at lunch he gave me some slightly shocking advice.

Background: At the F50C, annual and mid-year review time brings with it something I’ll call Leadership Assessment to help me avoid being dooced.  In the Leadership Assessment process, all managers of a department get together for a marathon session in which they discuss every employee: their strengths & weaknesses, potential for promotion, readiness for promotion.  They also set the employees’ review score and any compensation increases above & beyond what the score brings.

What’s nice about this is that important things like score and potential for promotion are not at risk to be in the hands of just one power-mad, jackass boss.  The group is a tempering, if not eliminating, influence on that kind of managerial abuse.  Of course what’s totally uncomfortable about this process is knowing that every manager on the team is sitting around talking about you, judging you, and sharing dirty laundry about you.

The slightly shocking advice:

Before every Leadership Assessment period, G asks his boss, What are you planning to say about me at Leadership Assessment? If that isn’t enough for the timid folks out there, G then tells his boss, After Leadership Assessment I’m going to come back to you and ask you what you actually said about me, and what everyone else said about me.

Wait, it gets better:

Then G goes in turn to each of his employees, and tells them: Here’s what I plan to say about you at Leadership Assessment, and then afterwards I’m going to come back and tell you what I actually said and also what everyone else said about you.

I find this advice amazing, mainly because it never would have occurred to ask this of my boss, or tell this to my employees without their asking first.  As much as I love and crave feedback, I am timid when it comes to asking for my leaders to lay my brand perception, potential and reputation all out on the table like that.  And I was super impressed when G told me he did this for his team.  He says consistently they love it.  I talked about managerial courage a little bit the other day: that’s nothing compared to this courage.

Are you bold enough to have your leadership really lay out for you all the external perceptions & reputation?

Are you bold enough to ask your manger to be frank about your potential for promotion?

Are you courageous enough to tell these things frankly but fairly to your employees?

How to Give Useful Feedback

Intern Nathaniel at Rypple left a comment the other day and then pinged me, which I thought was thoughtful since he is clearly doing some viral marketing.  So I like Intern Nathaniel, he seems conscientious and the guy’s just doing his job, trying to be a good marketer in a web 2.0 world. Brother’s gotta get the rent.

Anyhow, squeaky wheel gets the grease and all, I did go check out Rypple and it’s intriguing.  It’s a service that “lets you ask a question of people you trust and get back private feedback and then use that feedback to improve.”  I haven’t tried it yet, but I will after I write this post and then I’ll report back.  Cruising quickly around the site, here are my initial impressions:

• Might be very useful for small companies or firms where HR does not have a robust partner feedback process in place.
• Hmmm, how is this better than sending an email request for feedback?
• Only as good as the question you ask: with a vague, open-ended question you might get vague answers.  With a focused, specific and actionable question you will probably get useful answers.
• User interface is cute. I’m big on cute & friendly UI.
• The sample questions scrolling on the home page are really good. They appear to be real questions from users; Rypple has some beta users who really know how to solicit useful feedback.

Like I said, I’ll try it out and report back.  I am going to ask two questions of my team:  what is the one thing you wish I would do more more of to support you, and what is the one most annoying thing I do that I should stop?

In the meantime, here are my top tips for giving really useful feedback.  These come from real-life trial and error with my teams, effective feedback I’ve gotten, and trainings:

• Give it right away. Give it in the moment, when the behavior and result is fresh.  This makes it real and concrete for the person you’re giving it to.
• Make it actionable. What’s the call to action? Feedback like, Listen more, has no clear action a person can take to fix it. Feedback like, When you text in meetings and interrupt when I’m talking, it doesn’t seem like you’re listening to us, has very clear actions a person can take to fix it.
• Don’t avoid the hard stuff. Ignoring subtle things, or painful things does not mean they will go away. They will get worse. Nip it in the bud.
• Be as objective as possible. Obviously, this is about judging others’ behavior and style, so no one is perfectly objective.  But focus on observed, demonstrated behavior, the impact & consequences of that behavior.
• Load up on praise. People, if there’s one thing to remember, it’s REWARD THE BEHAVIOR YOU WANT MORE OF. Same concept as focusing on strengths: you’ll get a way bigger payoff when you focus on what’s working.
• Give it all year long. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if you’re not giving balanced, fair, constructive feedback all throughout the year, or if your message when giving performance reviews is a surprise, then you shouldn’t be managing people and there’s something wrong with you.
• Set expectations for change. Don’t just say, You sucked at X. Also say, I expect to see Y next time.
• Support them to change! For Pete’s sake, please also say, Let’s work together to figure out how you can do Y. Or, I’ve got your back as you work on Y. Then have them put Y on their agenda each time you meet for status — keep it active and real, and for Pete’s sake, GET THEIR BACK.
• Give feedback to peers & partners. Just because you don’t have direct reports doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be helping peers & partners to be more successful by catching them doing things right and providing actionable, specific, balanced and useful feedback when things aren’t going so well.  And just because you have direct reports doesn’t mean you get to slack on this.  We are all more successful when we help our peers, partners & clients to be successful. Do your part.
• Give feedback to your boss and your boss’ boss. This is tricker.  You have to invest a lot in your upwards relationships.  You MUST be trusted & known for being reliable and driving results.  But giving upwards feedback helps your mucky mucks be more successful, and a rising tide lifts all boats. This is good for them, for you and for your team. Practice with the small stuff and work up to the big stuff. Catch your mucky mucks doing things right, too! Here’s an example:  I used to tell my boss he needed to thank & recognize my team more.  I also helped him out by telling him what to thank them for and by writing nifty handwritten notes for him to sign.  He respected and valued this feedback, so I branched out a little, tested the watters and still got good results.  Finally I was able to tell him, Hey I don’t think you realize it but you come accross as really intimidating to certain folks at lower pay grades, and here’s why. He had no way of seeing this directly, and knowing this helped him adapt his style to connect better and thus get better results from some key people.

8 Tips on Giving Performance Reviews

I was talking with a colleague today about her strategy on a challenging performance review she has to give and it got me to thinking: what are some of the best pieces of advice, tips & techniques I’ve gotten?

1. Focus on signatures. Don’t dilute your message by giving a litany of everything that sucks about the person, or for that matter list everything they do that makes them walk on water.  Instead, focus in:  what are they known for? What is the single great thing that everyone wants them on the team because of? What is the weakness that is their main limiting factor?
2. Focus on the whats and the how. What did they accomplish, and what was the impact? But also talk about how they got it done.  I have an employee who got very little what accomplished because the project stalled (it wasn’t her fault).  But the how of how she dealt with it and focused on what she could control outshines the poor results.  Conversely, my colleague’s employee walks on water when it comes to project results, but is alienating the team and possibly taking sole credit for team results. Very bad how!
3. Keep it short and lean. I have learned so much about writing my self review and writing others’ reviews, from my boss.  He hardly writes more than four sentences in any section. (We have sections for the whats, the how, and the upcoming plans.)  He cuts out the crap, the fluffy words,  unnecessary adjectives, is firm but fair and gets to the point.
4. Use concrete examples. State observed behavior and consequences. Give specifics. No surprises, either — you should have been talking about concrete examples & feedback all year long. Geez, that’s management 101.  If you haven’t been giving tons of praise and a fair amount of actionable, in-the-moment constructive feedback all year there is something wrong with you and you shouldn’t be managing people.
5. Get partner feedback. Use your company’s feedback form or create your own, and ask 3-5 key partners of each of your employees for specific, candid and actionable feedback.  If they have direct reports, consider surveying their team. It will provide insight you might not have been able to see otherwise, especially if your team member is an individual contributor who operates fairly independently.  Oh, and best to summarize and anonymize before sharing with your employee, duh.
6. Use reviews to inspire. You are trying to inspire behavior changes, not de-motivate and cause people to shut down & disengage.  Talk about how you want the person to be successful, but in order for them to be successful they need to be able to look at poor performance or signature weaknesses straight on and deal with them.  For your A-players, talk about how you want them to take great performance and signature strengths to the next level.
7. Make it actionable. Identify what specific behaviors you want to see more of / less of in 2009. Talk with everyone about how you can support them as manger & coach to improve, or if already great, take their game to the next level. Ask them to identify concrete actions they will take. Follow the review process with a career development conversation and development plan. Keep those career conversations going with your employees throughout the year.
8. Thank them. Tell everyone that you’re glad they’re on the team and thank them for their hard work. (Unless of course you’re deeply, deeply not or they really, really didn’t.) This step is especially important for those of us in companies that are unable or unwilling to give merit increases due to the economy.

Quick Trick: Just Act

That old cliche about how it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission? So right on.

I have several times had direct reports who struggled with how to take initiative, or how to outperform.  These were the same people who wanted me to approve their courses of action ahead of time.  These were the same people who had trouble thinking creatively or critically.

They wanted permission; it gave them a sense of safety & security.

But we all know that growth comes best with risk and stepping outside of the comfort zone.

Try just acting instead. Some ideas to make it easier:

• Start with the small things. Get some positive feedback on small actions and the bigger actions will feel easier.
• Start with actions that delight your clients/customers/partners — the extra follow-up. Delivering more that was expected. Guidance, templates, foolproof instructions. A great user interface for the data you’re sending. More communication.
• Start with actions that help your boss but aren’t necessarily very public. Build some trust.
• Make sure you take partners, communicate, and are professional & pleasant to work with when you act. Don’t be a jerk or a juggernaut. Goes without saying, but I said it because it’s amazing how many people don’t seem to get this.
• Give “insurance”: For the small stuff, just act. For big stuff, act then inform. For high-risk stuff, inform then act.  (This is from The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey — part of the One Minute Manager franchise, but useful nonetheless.)

Acting feels really good. Acting makes you empowered. Act more. Ask less.

Love the One You’re With

Ok, I’m pretty happy about work right now for two reasons.

The first is that our goal-setting process is coming to an end and I’m locked. My colleague spoke up today in front of my boss and said he thought I’d been asked to take on too much given the resources I have, and I appreciate that. But even though I’ve been tasked to boil the ocean, I’m OK with failing on some of my objectives since you learn and grow most from failure.  And because of the way our points system is set up — voluntary assignment of points, and no hard correlation of points-to-objectives — I’m already strategizing to game the system and claim full points no matter how many objectives I actually achieve. Broken system, loose rules, break the rules, set new rules: learn to love the broken system, love the one you’re with.

Second reason I’m happy, and second way to love the one you’re with:  my current job is my dream job. Here’s how this works.  Under the theory that if you don’t define yourself others will define you, I’m going to define my current job in ways that establish me as working on, known for, an expert in, etc., my dream job.

The thing I’ve been craving to do is to have a leadership role in the communications field.  This is problematic for several reasons, the first being that there is zero up, down or lateral movement going on at my company right now — as with many firms these days.  Even more problematic is that leadership roles in the communications department and my current pay grade totally don’t jive.  I’m over-paygraded for a leadership role in that field. (People with director and VP titles in small agencies come to our communications department as individual contributors, manager titles at best, sometimes even specialist titles.) Finally, I have no direct experience in that field and I know I often over-romanticize what’s on the other side of the fence.

But thinking about my goals for 2009, I relized: I’m already doing much of what I think my fantasy job is all about. I am managing director-, possibly up to VP-level leaders. I am doing complex, cross-functional communication and change management with a huge group of stakeholders. I am developing strategy, then seeing it executed. For the applications & projects I own, I am steering them for the future.  I have a nice balance of extremely strategic and precise, tactical actions.

So I am going to talk about my work in ways that establish me as deputy-chief (I think my boss gets to be chief) strategist for EBI from the business side, and EBI communications director.  And I am going to talk about strengths & weaknesses in ways that support this. Establish goals in a way that supports this. Take on new work only if it supports this. Help my boss continue to position me, market me and brand me as chief strategist and communications director.

Two titles I’ve always wanted!

It’s an evolutionary process, but I’m very inspired and now firmly believe that anyone can evolve their current situation into their dream situaion — without a lot of fancy interviewing, jumping-ship, or etc.  My formula (and I didn’t realize this was a formula; hindsight is 20-20) is this:

• Consistently outperform in current role
• Consistently build deep, sustained relationships with boss, peers, clients
• Build trust and get known as a reliable expert and learner
• Fill gaps no one else fills. In my case it’s a sophisticated level of communication, and successfully guiding teams through confusion/ambiguity.
• Talk about the type of experiences I want, not just the job or title I want. In my case, for a couple of years I’ve been a broken record talking about managing people, communications, strategy development, managing complex virtual teams/stakeholders and the ability to execute a few very tangible deliverables.

Since I’m trusted, fill gaps and am known for delivering outcomes, it’s been easier for my leadership to keep attaching me to new work & open opportunities that match the type of experiences I’m looking for.

So since I don’t have the title I want yet, and moving to the communicaions department may not be the best/easiest/smartest/possible move, I will now just:

• Behave as though I already have the title I want
• Behave as though my current job is my dream job, to the point of describing what I do in the terms of my dream job.

I apologize if this all is total Duh to you but I suddenly put it all together today and I’m very inspired to create my own reality right now.

Do any of you create your own career reality like this?

10 Free Training Ideas for a Down Economy

Like so many companies, the F50C has been aggressively managing expenses.  One of the practical outcomes is that everyone’s training budgets have been cut back to zero, at least through the first 6 months of 2009.  However, as a management team we are still committed to being career development partners for our employees, and training & continuous learning is an important component of development.  So we’re seeking free and creative ways to connect our team to learning. Here are some that we’re using, and some that I’m just brainstorming – -but if they make sense or I get other ideas in the comments, I’ll use them!

1. Webinars. So many of our vendors and consulting partners routinely offer free webinars via their websites on topics that are actually useful — and a surprising number of them are NOT all about selling us more of the vendor’s product or service.
2. eNewsletters. There are free eNewsletters out there on every topic, from IT to trend forecasting, to market research to career development.  Even Harvard Business Review (boucoup bucks to subscribe to the print version, BTW) offers an eNewsletter with links to the latest HBS research.
3. bNet. While a litte buzwordy, there is genuinely good content on sites like bNet if you care to look for it.  A good place to go for research.  Consider also WSJ’s career site, Change This, 43Folders, blogs on topics in your industry, etc for free content.
4. White papers. Like webinars, many of our vendor & consulting partners offer free white papers for download. Currently I’ve got one in my queue to read tomorrow on developing meaningful performance metrics.
5. Memberships in local chapters. Company is a member in your local chapter of an IT, marketing, sales or etc organization? Go to their local meetings or organize to host the meeting on your campus. You usually get free or cheap great content AND good networking.
6. Read the Book. My company is a member of the Institute of Management Studies (IMS) which puts on really good full-day offsite trainings on a vareity of topics in cities all over the USA.  I routinely scan their site for classes that look good and see if the trainer has a book.  The class is usually about what the book is about — that’s how good x-marketing works.  I always read the book first (from library!) to determine if the class seems worthwhile since the classes are NOT cheap.  In a down economy with no training budget, just the book will have to do.  Besides IMS, there are other training content delivery companies out there – use Google.
7. Cold-contact content owners and barter for their services. We’re trying to stay free, right? Is there an author or industry leader that you’re passionate to learn from? Why not email them and propose a trade, a benchmarking session, a mini-conference, or some other way to put them in touch with you & your team, while giving them back something of value that’s not actually, um, cash.
8. Peer training. Have folks on the team offer brown bags or round-robin training to broaden everyone’s skill set.  Or set up learning groups that meet and dive into topics of interest on a regular basis.
9. Mentoring. Hook everyone on your team up with a mentor in your company or your industry organization, with a specific eye towards working on a developmental opportunity. Or, go out and find your own mentor for the same purpose.
10. Stretch assignments. It’s been proven that 70% of effective adult learning comes from hands-on, on-the-job activity. Or at least that’s what my HR/Organizational Effectiveness departmnet claims, but I believe them.  So make sure every last person on your team has at least one stretch assignment. If you yourself don’t have at least one stretch assignment, ask for it and keep asking until you get it.

How do you get free training content & experiences?

What Would You Do If You Won the Lottery?

I think one of the best time to do the lottery-what-if exercise is when times are scary.  Because if your current circumstances — your Plan A — go away, wouldn’t you rather have a Plan B that you really love (or at least a vision if not the actual plan), instead of a Plan B that’s more of the mundane same-old same-old?
Make a mere repeat of your Plan A, your Plan C.

Make your Plan B really special.

That way, if Plan A collapses, you’re well poised with a clear vision to start to execute that vision.  And if times start feeling abundant again, and Plan A is going well, why not consider: now that you have a great vision, what’s stopping you?

The lottery-what-if game is a great way to brainstorm some truly soul-nourishing Plan B options. Here’s what I’ve come up with, sort of in rank 0rder:

1. Focus full-time on this blog, freelance writing & writing columns.
2. Open the COOLEST skyway convenience shop ever, in downtown Minneapolis. Filled with what you need and expect but also with amazing oddities & unexpected fun crap.
3. Open an Etsy shop and sell custom-order poetry.
4. Consult for non-profits on back office management, career development & grant writing.
5. Run the back office of a small creative business and get an equity position.
6. Be a courier or concierge.
7. Stop working entirely, and work at home on artisan & homestead things (growing & preserving my own food, remodeling my house, keeping chickens, converting my car to run on biodiesel, you get the drift.)
8. Buy and manage all the properties on my block.

See, some are kind of crazy, some are do-able fantasies, and many are things I can start doing very easily and quickly!